I have a compaq portable and 2 HDDs. I can only have one hooked up at a time and until tonight, both worked great. I think I may have deleted some critical file or something on one of them because now the computer wont start up. It says "Incorrect DOS version" and then "Bad or missing command interpreter" Im guessing it doesnt know which version of dos to load to or maybe my autoexec.bat file is dos 3.2 and the computer needs dos 3.1 or something. Anyway, how can I get that HDD to load? I dont own any setup disk, but since I can access my other HDD i figure any files I need I can copy from there and put them on a floppy.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
This is likely due to the HDD having been SYS'd with one version of DOS, but containing the files for a different version (e.g. FORMAT /S or SYS A: C: was performed using, say, DOS 3.3, but then content of the drive having DOS 5.0 system files).
What you can do is create a bootable floppy by booting from the working HDD (FORMAT A: /S, or SYS C: A
, and make sure COMMAND.COM resides in the root directory of the floppy disk. Copy FORMAT.COM and SYS.COM from the good HDD's \DOS directory onto the floppy disk, as well.
Swap HDD's and place the floppy you created into the A: drive. Once booted up to an A: prompt, do a quick assessment of the HDD's state. You may want to backup the content of C:\DOS, etc, just in case. To make the HDD bootable, use the same SYS command, but this time A: C: (transfers the system from A: to C
.
The one thing I don't remember is whether SYS requires that the target volume is empty and/or has an empty root directory. You may receive an error to that effect if such is the case. If you don't care about what's in the drive, you could always do a FORMAT /S on it from the floppy and then spend a few hours transferring stuff back to it, little by little.